It’s nearly 2 years later. There have been some changes to the IBM websites, but Passport Advantage has had no significant changes. I’m here at IBM Connect 2013 to once again ask the question “When will you fix this website?” If you’re here, watch for it at “Ask the Product Managers” session. I will report the results later.

In case you were wondering, no one was there who could address questions about Passport Advantage. But it was recognized that perhaps next year they should make it a point to have that person present to address the question. Meanwhile, it was explained that, after all, Passport Advantage is used by all IBM customers, not just those who use Lotus software, so it isn’t such a simple task as one might expect. It just seems to me that in that case, this is all the more important. This is perhaps the one bit of IBM software used by every single IBM customer.

It’s really hard to imagine that cleaning up the user interface of a website that hasn’t been updated in probably 10+ years would be so hard to do, especially considering they can release several new versions of Notes in just one year. Especially considering how critical this site is for their business to the process of delivering all of their software products to their customers. It’s a matter of misplaced priorities. This has been a problem from the very first day the software was moved from Lotus.com to Passport Advantage many years ago. Given the huge response from the audience this year and every other year this has been mentioned, it really begs the question if Ask the Developers and Ask the Product Managers is sincerely interested in our feedback or if it is just a way to placate the crowd. I’m not so self absorbed to expect IBM to replace their website just because I blogged about it. But I have seen this topic come up nearly every year and it is universally loudly applauded.

In case you hadn’t noticed, the Passport Advantage website has a new look. I have not yet had a chance to explore it in detail. It looks like some (but not all) of the old issues have been cleaned up. I will post a more detailed review later.